Just a little drop

Dow -353.87 points today.
I'm surprised nobody wants to discuss it. Wall street scared at the very mention of the word "taper"? What do you think it will look like tomorrow?

What says you, fellow Monkeys?

"It's always a good sign when people feel the need to mask their faces when acting under the color of law"- DeadFred on Zerohedge.com, September 2013
"There is nothing -- and then there is nothing -- and still there is nothing and then suddenly everything is made out of knives and the world becomes completely insane." cougar_w on Zerohedge.com, June 2014
"...regulations have sometimes been well meaning but often designed specifically as a barrier to competition by special interests who helped write the rules."- Carl Popper on Zerohedge.com, November 2013

Good probability it's due to several things. Bernake announcements Wed about scaling back asset purchases. Increased claims for unemployment. A fear in China about loan defaults and interest rates that jumped from 4% a month ago to about 12% with some blips into the 20's yesterday. And so it goes...

They can only keep the market artificially pumped up for so long. The moment they stop the juicing, it is going to drop like a rock.... just the mention of doing that is causing the current drop.

"Freedom isn't free" --Colonel Walter Hitchcock
“The most important six inches on the battlefield is between your ears.” General 'Mad Dog' James Mattis
non semper erit aestas- It will not always be summer (be prepared for hard times)!!

This stock market stuff is all so heavily based upon "confidence."
Confidence...
Bernanke and his ilk not being grossly wrong,
Derivatives wont tank (again),
In China that loans won't default,
That housing won't tank,
Big investment banks not messing up,
Government spending continues,
There is no day of reckoning for .gov debt,
States like CA can magically keep borrowing,
And the list goes on.

Once the investment crowd get "real," holly shummer... But history suggests they generally aren't "real" for very long. I suppose that may be good but it sure creates risk and hurts a lot of people.

They have been sucking (except for the months ahead of a big election) for the last ten or twelve years. I can remember early on, when little Bush was in charge, the price of gasoline and diesel jumped $.25 in one day.

Everybody had a fit! We weren't used to more than a $.05 change at a time. Truck drivers were complaining that they were no longer profitable, UPS went on strike, and such. Things have been generally sucking since then, and that was just before 9/11.

My wife and I (newlywed) were just moving into our first house a few days after it happened. I can remember how easy it was when I was single to save money and buy the things I wanted to. After I got married, things changed and got tougher, even though she had a job, too! A job that I paid for her training from before we were married.

I thought to myself, "this marriage thing really kind of sucks." But after a while, I came to realize that it wasn't our marriage, it was the economy. And now, while I pine away in nursing school, she is the one making the money. Wow, how things can change, tables can turn.

I can clearly say that my wife has been my greatest and best investment on this Earth.

"It's always a good sign when people feel the need to mask their faces when acting under the color of law"- DeadFred on Zerohedge.com, September 2013
"There is nothing -- and then there is nothing -- and still there is nothing and then suddenly everything is made out of knives and the world becomes completely insane." cougar_w on Zerohedge.com, June 2014
"...regulations have sometimes been well meaning but often designed specifically as a barrier to competition by special interests who helped write the rules."- Carl Popper on Zerohedge.com, November 2013

I can remember way back when the stock market was based on how well businesses were doing. Now it's based on the crap spewed by one man. This is NOT good, folks....and hasn't been for a while. But, there's still money to be made in the market.

I can remember way back when the stock market was based on how well businesses were doing. Now it's based on the crap spewed by one man. This is NOT good, folks....and hasn't been for a while. But, there's still money to be made in the market.

Kajun

Click to expand...

And lost, don't forget for every winner, there is a loser. And if you are sitting at the table and don't know who the sucker is ....

the economy is an engine. It runs on rumors, profits, and reinvestment, it is restricted by taxation, and regulation. As anyone who has ever tuned a small engine knows, you adjust one item at a time (fuel, air, spark) for best performance. Tuning two or more at a time just screws up the balance, and you have to start over. I expect this economy to crash, because they are screwing around with too many variables at once.

“Man’s mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without a knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch-or build a cyclotron-without a knowledge of his aim and of the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think." John Galt (Ayn Rand)

Patents are not evil, profit is not a dirty word, providing for your family's future is not a sin, and what is mine is not your's just because you want it. Kellory.I have received NO secret government orders.(Watch for this notice to be removed)

I find that people, the average normal Americans are not feeling to confident in the stability of the country. Friday I watched the McLaughlin Group and even those people didn't seem confident in the economy. Investors will talk about the "lost decade"- 2000- 2009 but I do wonder. Currently the market is up 12% for the year, yet I looked at my portfolio and I certainly didn't make 12%, I didn't even make 8%. The movers and shakers are making huge gains on paper but I feel one day soon we will be reading about people jumping out of windows on Wall street again.

Stocks declined more than 1 percent across the board Monday, with the Dow and S&P 500 dropping to two-month lows, amid worries the Federal Reserve may start to wind down its stimulus measures.
"We're currently in a risk off environment that has built up over the recent days," said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial Group. "Here in the U.S., it will be important to watch the economic data over the next few months—if the economy can be supported with higher interest rates, investors should return to equities. But if the economy is unable to stand on its own and the Fed still wants to take away the punch bowl, that could spell more difficulty for the equity markets."
Adding to jitters, concerns about tightening central bank policy accelerated losses on the Shanghai Composite, which suffered its worst one-day selloff in nearly four years. Goldman Sachs became the latest bank to downgrade China's growth outlook, saying tighter financial conditions are a downside risk for the world's second largest economy.
(Read More:China's Credit Squeeze Deals Fresh Blow to Stocks)
Meanwhile, Apple dropped below $400 a share for the first time since mid-April after Jefferies cut its price target on the tech giant to $405 a share from $420 and lowered its iPhone sales estimates for the third quarter. Separately, Apple announced that it had changed the way senior executives, including CEO Tim Cook, receive stock awards.

Dow Jones Industrial Average
NamePrice Change%ChangeDJIA Dow Jones Industrial Average 14576.73 &nbsp; -222.67 -1.50%S&P 500 S&P 500 Index 1562.32 &nbsp; -30.11 -1.89%NASDAQ Nasdaq Composite Index 3300.10 &nbsp; -57.15 -1.70%
The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled more than 200 points. The blue-chip index slumped more than 2 percent last week.
The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were also sharply in the red. The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, traded above 20.
The Dow has dropped a staggering 6 percent since hitting its all-time high of 15,542.20 in May. And the S&P 500 has plunged more than 7 percent from its all-time high of 1,687.18 in May.
All key S&P sectors were firmly in negative territory, dragged by materials and financials.

Play Video

Rising Interest Rate Plays
Experts share their trades on the jump in yields, as the 10-year note hits a new 22-month high and the U.S. dollar nears a 3-week top.
"In this kind of rumor driven, anxious market, there would have been a flight to safety – [investors] would have rushed into U.S. Treasurys," noted Art Cashin, director of floor operations at UBS Financial Services. "They've moved the dollar, but not into Treasurys. So they're hiding in cash."
Jitters over prospects that the Federal Reserve could start paring back on its easy-money policy later this year pushed stocks lower and Treasury yields to their highest levels in nearly two years. Last week, major averages logged their worst weekly drop since mid-April.
The U.S. greenback rallied against a basket of currencies, trading near its highest level in almost three weeks.The dollar index extended its sharp gains from last week's 2 percent rally, its biggest weekly rally since November 2011.
"The natural stopping point in the market may be the March and April lows in the 1,535-1,540 area…We could see a bit more downside as the market comes to grips that the end of the Fed stimulus program is in sight," said Sheldon. "Also, the key is to watch the bond market—the rates have increased rapidly and we need to see that settle down."
Furthermore, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) waved a red flag for central banks over the weekend, saying it was time to end ultra-lose monetary policy. BIS—known as the central bank for central banks—said in its annual report that current monetary policy in the U.S., euro zone, U.K. and Japan will not bring about much-needed labor and product market reforms, and is a recipe for failure.

"Freedom isn't free" --Colonel Walter Hitchcock
“The most important six inches on the battlefield is between your ears.” General 'Mad Dog' James Mattis
non semper erit aestas- It will not always be summer (be prepared for hard times)!!

And it will be interesting to see if it rebounds a little bit in a few days IF some investors think there are now some modest bargains and buying picks ups a bit. If not, that will unsettle the pols and may yield some entertainment from the more stupid talking heads.

Is the dead cat bouncing, or is it just using up one of the 85 billion lives the Fed has been giving it per month?

"It's always a good sign when people feel the need to mask their faces when acting under the color of law"- DeadFred on Zerohedge.com, September 2013
"There is nothing -- and then there is nothing -- and still there is nothing and then suddenly everything is made out of knives and the world becomes completely insane." cougar_w on Zerohedge.com, June 2014
"...regulations have sometimes been well meaning but often designed specifically as a barrier to competition by special interests who helped write the rules."- Carl Popper on Zerohedge.com, November 2013

Another 114 points today. Did anyone else notice the 100 or so point spike early in the morning, followed by a (more or less) stable trading day for the last three days? What happens during that opening hour?

I guess the lows a few days ago was some profit taking by those in-the-know, I guess they needed a new layer of electroplated gold on their Bentley.

"It's always a good sign when people feel the need to mask their faces when acting under the color of law"- DeadFred on Zerohedge.com, September 2013
"There is nothing -- and then there is nothing -- and still there is nothing and then suddenly everything is made out of knives and the world becomes completely insane." cougar_w on Zerohedge.com, June 2014
"...regulations have sometimes been well meaning but often designed specifically as a barrier to competition by special interests who helped write the rules."- Carl Popper on Zerohedge.com, November 2013

How about the meeting of the Fed this afternoon! At 2:00 the markets started to rally, but I guess the Bernank said the "T" word and it dropped from then on. Gold/silver went up $20/$1 at the same time. Pretty funny watching the mechanics in motion.

I hear a lot of gold speculators saying that they are expecting a rise in bullion prices, followed a month or so later by another price crash. The reasons they gave for this proposal seemed like they would be for pure spite.

"It's always a good sign when people feel the need to mask their faces when acting under the color of law"- DeadFred on Zerohedge.com, September 2013
"There is nothing -- and then there is nothing -- and still there is nothing and then suddenly everything is made out of knives and the world becomes completely insane." cougar_w on Zerohedge.com, June 2014
"...regulations have sometimes been well meaning but often designed specifically as a barrier to competition by special interests who helped write the rules."- Carl Popper on Zerohedge.com, November 2013